Should College Students Be Forced To Buy E-Books?

It's not just rising college tuition and room and board charges. It's all those incidentals--from student activity and health fees to lab fees and books--that are turning higher education into such a financial burden. According to the College Board's latest Trends In College Pricing report, in 2011-2012, books and supplies cost students at four year public colleges an average of $1,168, and at private non-profit four-year colleges an average of $1,213. Nor is this a new problem. A 2005 report by Congress' Government Accountability Office found that from 1986 through 2004, text book prices nearly tripled, rising at twice the rate of inflation.

So I was intrigued when a representative of McGraw-Hill e-mailed that Tom Malek, an executive from the company's higher ed division, wanted to write a guest post about a plan to bring down those costs with e-books.

Full disclosure: As the parent of two college students, I'm not convinced by the solution Malek offers, which would force students to buy new e-books, rather than allowing them to buy used (or new) paper texts. Neither is my daughter, who conscientiously scouts for deals (and even gets free hand-me-downs) before buying pricey science text books. While she would be lost without her iPhone and MacBook, she prefers to do her heavy duty reading and studying on dead trees---as I know I do. Still, students and parents alike should pay attention to what Malek has to say, since his model may be tried out soon at a university near and dear to your pocketbook.

Solving the E-book Problem in Higher Education

By Tom Malek, Vice President of Learning Solutions for McGraw-Hill Higher Education

For some time now, e-books have been the presumed future of higher education. The reasons why have always been pretty apparent: they have the potential to save students money, they’re a lot easier to carry around, and because today’s students seem to prefer digital to print when it comes to just about everything else, it followed that they’d feel the same way about textbooks.

At first it was the growing popularity of traditional e-readers – your Kindles, your Nooks – that was supposed to drive this trend. Then along came the iPad, which was adopted in astronomically large numbers by consumers and students alike and offered the promise of a new kind of interactive reading experience. Last month saw one of the biggest bets yet on e-books, when Microsoft announced that it will invest $300 million in a joint venture with Barnes & Noble that includes not only the bookseller’s Nook e-reader and digital division, but also it college bookstores. Barnes & Noble valued the venture at $1.7 billion, which is striking when you consider that Barnes & Noble’s own market cap was less than $900 million at the time of the announcement.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the e-book revolution: students decided to stay with print. E-book adoption among college students has remained consistently, almost puzzlingly low. Studies currently show that about 3 percent of college students are purchasing e-books. If today’s students are truly digital natives, and if e-books offer so much value to students, why haven’t we seen more uptake?

For one, when it comes to studying, students have shown a strong preference for the familiar, and are often reluctant to give up print – something they’ve been accustomed to their entire lives. It’s also a problem of perception. Students who are unaware of how e-books can enhance the learning experience are less likely to adopt, even if it means spending a few extra dollars.

This is where price becomes important. Companies, including my own, simply have not been able to deliver e-books at a price that’s low enough to entice college students to make the switch from print to digital. There are a number of factors affecting the price of e-books, but the long and the short of why they’re not priced lower is that the costs that are saved by shifting from print to digital – things like paper, printing and warehousing – represent only a fraction of what it costs to produce a book. The highest costs – research, paying our authors – don’t change no matter what form the final book takes. To date, e-books have offered students some cost savings; those savings just haven’t been enough to get them to put down their more familiar print textbook and switch over to digital. When you consider all the ways that e-books can help students learn more effectively, this becomes a much larger problem.

Recently, however, publishers have begun developing innovative new models that allow them to provide e-books to students more affordably. In one example, McGraw-Hill has partnered with several colleges and their bookstores to ensure that all students have access to the learning materials for their courses at a price that’s substantially lower than what they’re used to paying – as much as 60% less than a print textbook. This is highly competitive with the price of a used book and provides students with the many other benefits of e-books: portability, instantaneous access to course material on the first day of class, and assurance that they’re using the right edition. It also represents a significant savings for students: The College Board has reported that college students, on average, spend about $1,000 a year on textbooks. Some studies have shown that up to one-third of students (or more) opt to not purchase a textbook for a course they’re taking for the purpose of saving money, which clearly can have an adverse effect on a student’s academic performance.

Through these new models, we’re finally getting e-books into the hands of a large number of students – and helping them save money in the process. Here’s a look at a few keys to how these models work.